Stephen Harper is promising to lose government “fat” to fast-track his deadline to retire the federal deficit.

Unveiling the Conservative party platform Friday, Harper vowed to balance the books a full year ahead of the recent budget’s 2015-2016 target by eliminating waste and downsizing the civil service. His 67-page spending and policy plan – called “Here for Canada” – presents a mix of previously-announced budget measures and new initiatives designed to tackle everything from contraband tobacco to religious oppression abroad.

Harper called the platform an “affordable” and “low-tax” plan that will help Canadians secure jobs and ride out uncertain economic times. He also pledged to bundle a series of crime bills into omnibus legislation and pass it within the first 100 days of Parliament.

Accelerating the timetable by one year to balance the nation’s books by 2014, Harper said there are big savings to be found in consolidating the government’s computer system and attrition in the federal bureaucracy.

“We’ve got 80,000 public servants retiring over the next few years. We don’t need to replace all of them,” he said. “We’re going to be very specific. We’re going to be able to find that two or three per cent of government spending we need; to find the fat and get this deficit down.”

Ottawa South Liberal candidate David McGuinty said Harper’s language is reminiscent of former Ontario premier Mike Harris’ before he “picked fights with the unions” and “slashed and burned.”

“Given the artificial deadlines he’s now imposing on himself, he’ll have no choice,” McGuinty told iPolitics.

“If he’s going to continue with this $30-billion acquisition of the jets, $10-13 billion in criminal justice and $6 billion in corporate tax cuts, he’s going to have to gut and compromise our cherished public services.”

John Gordon, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said successive governments have conducted ongoing “strategic reviews” and the Mar. 22 budget called for $4 billion in savings. He worries about potential impact to public services in the attrition exercise.

“If you don’t replace those positions, the programs and services that are being delivered are not going to be there,” he said. “If you’re cutting the staff, you’re cutting the programs.”

But Gordon said downsizing in the public service often means more millions spent on contract workers that serve as a “shadow” public service.

Other highlights of the Conservative platform include:
– expedite the deportation of foreign criminals and streamline multiple levels of appeal for those ordered deported for serious crimes or terrorist ties
– give the Coast Guard a law-enforcement mandate, establish armed boarding teams with Coast Guard and RCMP and arm selected Coast Guard vessels
– develop a new integrated counter-terrorism strategy
– expand adult basic education programs in the territories and extend the Dempster highway to the Arctic Ocean
– build a new national War of 1812 monument, a national Holocaust memorial and a memorial to victims of communism
– plans for a digital economy strategy
– create an office of religious freedom in the department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to monitor and promote religious freedom around the world
– establish national parks in the Mealy Mountains, Newfoundland and Labrador and Rouge Valley east of Toronto
– support clean energy projects that replace fossil fuel with renewable sources
– amend the Criminal Code to double the victim surcharge and make it mandatory without exception
– provide enhanced EI benefits to parents of murdered, missing or gravely ill children
– crack down on drugs in prisons with annual drug testing, laying additional charges for drug possession and denying parole to those who fail drug tests
– ending concurrent periods of parole eligibility – “sentence discounts” – for multiple child sex offences and child pornography
– mandatory jail time for repeat offenders of trafficking contraband tobacco and a new RCMP force of 50 officers dedicated to cracking down on contraband tobacco
– ensure every recreational hockey arena in Canada has a defibrillator